Tiipai, Tiipay or Tipai is a Native American language belonging to the Delta–California branch of the Yuman language family, which spans Arizona, California, and Baja California. As part of the Yuman family, Tiipai has also been consistently included in the controversial quasi-stock Hokan. Tiipai is spoken by a number of Kumeyaay tribes in northern Baja California and southern San Diego County, California. There were, conservatively, 200 Tiipai speakers in California in the early 1990s,Hinton, Leanne. 1994. Flutes of Fire: Essays on California Indian Languages. Berkeley, CA: Heyday Books. and 100 reported it 2007, with an additional 230 speakers in Mexico in 2000.
In the past, Tiipai and its neighbors to the north, Kumeyaay and Ipai, had been considered three dialects of a single Diegueño language—as a result, Tiipai is also known as Southern Diegueño. However, linguists now recognize that they represent at least three distinct language clusters within a speech variety continuum.Langdon, Margaret. 1990. "Diegueño: How Many Languages?" In Proceedings of the 1990 Hokan-Penutian Languages Workshop, edited by Redden, James E. pp. 184–190. University of Southern Illinois, Carbondale. Tiipai itself is not a uniform speech variety, with borders that are far from clearcut and variations across towns such as Jamul, San José, and La Huerta. Some suggest that it might be possible to recognize multiple languages within Tiipai.Laylander, Don. 1985. "Some Linguistic Approaches to Southern California's Prehistory". San Diego State University Cultural Resource Management Casual Papers 2(1):14–58.Mithun, Marianne. 1999. The Languages of Native North America. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press. On the other hand, despite a great deal of lexical variation, all varieties of Tiipai are mutually intelligible, meaning that it is a single language with a great deal of variation across communities. For a discussion of sociolinguistic motivation for this variation, see Field 2011.
Loanwords are numerous in Tiipai—the majority are from Spanish, while a few come from English. Published documentation of the Tiipai language includes a descriptive grammar of Jamul Tiipai, a trilingual dictionary,Miller, Amy and Langdon, Margaret. 2008. Barona Inter-Tribal Dictionary: 'Iipay Aa Tiipay Aa Uumall. Lakeside, CA: Barona Museum Press. a trilingual book of stories and oral histories from Baja California Kumiai communities, a word list,Meza Cuero, Jon and Meyer, Paula. 2008. Tipai Language-English-Spanish Word List. San Diego, CA: San Diego Unified School District. and texts, including audio and video on the ELAR website.Hinton, Leanne. 1976. The Tar Baby Story. In Yuman Texts, edited by Langdon, Margaret. International Journal of American Linguistics Native American Texts Series 1.3:101–106.Hinton, Leanne. 1978. Coyote Baptizes the Chickens. In Coyote Stories, edited by Bright, William. International Journal of American Linguistics Native American Texts Series monograph 1:117–120.
Phonology
Vowels The Jamul dialect of Tiipai contains seven vowels, four short and three long, as length is contrastive in Tiipai. The only short vowel without a corresponding long vowel is . This phoneme only appears in unstressed positions and is inserted to break up consonant clusters, though its appearance is not entirely predictable. Short vowels in the final position are often followed by aspiration, but unlike other Yuman languages, initial vowels do not have an aspirated onset. Short Long Front Central Back Front Central Back High Mid Low Tiipai features many alternations in vowels, with several vowels having multiple allophones. Only predictable variations are discussed below, but there are additional cases where two allophones covary, appearing in the same condition.
The phoneme is usually realized as [], though it is realized as between palatals and when stressed and as [] when preceded by or and followed by when stressed. The long vowel // is realized as when stressed and preceding or adjacent to . Additionally, // is realized as when unstressed between and .
The vowel is normally realized as [], though it is realized as when stressed and followed by and when unstressed and before . is realized as when stressed and followed by , , or a velar consonant.
surfaces as when between palatals (unless it is stressed and preceding ) and when preceded by a consonant other than , , or and followed by . It is realized as before .
is consistently realized as between labials.
Consonants Jamul Tiipai features a consonant inventory of 21 phonemes. BilabialDentalAlveolar(Alveolo-)palatalVelarGlottalnor.pal.nor.lab.Stop/Affricate Fricative Nasal TrillLateral Approximant Scholarly work describes some phonemes above as alveo-palatal, despite the fricative and affricate being normally described as post-alveolar and the approximant as palatal. However, this grouping is consistent with other Americanist works of the time.Campbell, Lyle, 2000. American Indian languages: the historical linguistics of Native America (Vol. 4). Oxford University Press on Demand.
All obstruents in Tiipai are voiceless.
The phoneme in Jamul Tiipai is described as apico-dental.
Consonants and can be syllabic when in, respectively, a post-stress position following a consonant and in the initial position followed by or and any vowel besides .
becomes [] when following a stressed, non-front vowel.
In a post-stress position, becomes , while becomes [].
In final position, is realized as [].
There is one native word, , that contains the voiced bilabial plosive //. Analysis of the term is complicated, so since the phoneme is only found in one native word, is not included in the above table.
Both and form diphthongs with all possible preceding stressed vowels, while sometimes forms diphthongs with preceding and in unstressed positions.
Stress and syllable structure As is typical of other Yuman languages, Tiipai words contain a single stressed syllable, always corresponding to the grammatical root. As prefixes vastly outnumber suffixes, stress is usually placed on the final syllable. Syllables are (C)V(C), where the V may be short or long.
Biconsonantal clusters are permitted initially, medially, and finally, while triconsonantal clusters are permitted initially and medially. No clusters of a dental and alveolar consonant are permitted and identical consonants cannot form a cluster, with the exception of . Attested final consonant clusters are (with dashes separating phonemes): , , , , , , . Attested vowel clusters include: , , , , , .
The glottal stop is only found in stem-initial or root-initial positions, or immediately proceeding a root, where it is followed by a stressed phoneme. The labialized velar consonants are only found syllable-initially in the pre-stress position.
Phonological processes Roughly six major rules governing phonemic sound changes have been posited in Tiipai, listed below. Note that deletion may occur in other environments to restore initial and medial clusters, but since this behavior is not fully regular, it is not described as a rule below. Clusters of glottal stops are reduced: → . High vowels become glides before and : → , → . Vowels become shortened when preceding a glottal stop or when pre-stress and not adjacent to the root: → , → . assimilates to preceding a dental stop: → . is inserted in a pre-stress position between a non-syllabic segment and a consonant: → . is deleted in clusters consisting of a sibilant followed by a stop other than or or clusters beginning with the glottal stop: → , → .
Morphology
Tiipai employs mostly prefixes, though some suffixes are used frequently. Affixes are almost always a single syllable, and many consist of only a single phoneme.
Verbs
Verbs bear the majority of morphology in Tiipai, divided between lexical affixes and affixes representing derivational and inflection processes.
Lexical affixes
Most basic verb stems in Tiipai are made up of the root and one or more lexical affixes. These lexical affixes are not productive, and in many cases their meaning is not clear. However, they are meaningful in the sense that a common semantic notion can be found in a percentage of the verbs that bear the affix, and in many cases the underlying roots never appear without these lexical affixes. However, there are two lexical suffixes that express direction whose meanings are transparent: and .
Additionally, lexical reduplication occurs in Tiipai to form verb stems. In 17 instances, full reduplication occurs, with the stress falling on the second syllable: . In five instances, full reduplication occurs except the vowel of the first syllable is reduced to : .
Derivational morphology
For all derivational processes in Tiipai, there are several morphemes that, unless indicated otherwise, can each independently and optionally express their corresponding morphological function. For example, the causative is formed using any amount of the following affixes, ordered by linear order within the verb:
, , or Lexical prefix(es) or Root (potentially with a change in vowel length)
As mentioned above, apart from affixes separated by or in the list above, these affixes can co-exist—for example, stative verbs often take , , and : → . Furthermore, some affixes only appear in certain phonological conditions— only appears when the stem ends in a stressed , , or : → . The causative, like other derivational processes, can also cause changes within the stem itself: in 17 cases, lexical affixes are lost, while an intrusive appears in five cases, along with other miscellaneous phenomena.
There are two types of plural verbs in Tiipai: plural subject forms, denoting multiple subjects, and distributive action forms, denoting multiple objects. Plural subject forms are formed as follows:
Lexical prefix(es)
or Lexical prefix(es)
Root (potentially with a change in vowel length) Lexical suffix, , or
In this derivational process, vowel length change within the root is actually the most productive process, occurring in 72% of stems: → . A few further notes: the position of is not always predictable, frequently occurs with verbs of motion, and and occur only with stems ending in a vowel. Like the causative, loss of lexical affixes and an intrusive may also occur. Distributive action verbs are formed similarly, except the only processes that may occur include prefixation of , suffixation of , and root vowel length change. For distributive action formation, has an allomorph , realized following sibilants: → .
Other derivational processes that occur on the verb include:
nominalization on both the subject (referring to a person who habitually or professionally performs the action) and the oblique (referring to a patient, instrument, or location associated with the action) formation of frequency words formation of relative stems, or special stems for some verbs when appearing in relative clauses formation of irrealis stems for some verbs formation of stative stems for some verbs
Inflectional morphology
Although a few verbs inflect analytically via an auxiliary, most verbs in Tiipai inflect for person using the following prefixes:
1st person: '- before stems beginning with a stressed vowel, ∅ elsewhere 2nd person: Imperative: 3rd person: , , or before root initial stems, ∅ elsewhere
Special prefixes are used in some combinations when transitive verbs have 1st or 2nd person objects:
Subject 1st person 2nd person Imperative 3rd person Object 1st person2nd person
The "..." indicates intervening lexical prefixes: .
Finally, there exist special person prefixes for relative clauses in the subject position:
1st person: 2nd person: 3rd person: ∅
Nouns